DOCSLIB.ORG

The Power of Talk

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Power of Talk FROMHBR THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW OnPoint ARTICLE That mild-mannered The Power of Talk: manager who rarely speaks up in meetings Who Gets Heard and Why may have the best by Deborah Tannen solutions to your company’s worst problems—if only you’d listen. New sections to guide you through the article: • The Idea in Brief • The Idea at Work • Exploring Further. PRODUCT NUMBER 9977 THE IDEA IN BRIEF The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why You can spot a competent colleague with a linguistic style, we deprive our companies of great idea a mile away. Or can you? the opportunity to benefit from those ideas. Most of us judge others’ competence—as well Linguistic style differences are especially notice- as their confidence and authority—by the way able between genders. In U.S. businesses, where they talk. Based on what we hear, we decide men’s speaking style dominates, women may be whether a boss’, peer’s, or subordinate’s ideas ignored, interrupted, and passed over for pro- merit our attention and support. motions—even if they’re highly competent. There’s only one problem with this process: How to make sure your talented employees We all speak different “languages.” We assign get heard, get credit, and get work done—no different meaning to linguistic behaviors such matter what “language” they speak? Hone your as questioning, apologizing, and being indirect. awareness of different linguistic styles. Then Result? We misjudge one another—ignoring develop flexible approaches to meetings, men- or outright rejecting someone’s ideas because toring, and performance evaluation. Finally, we’ve decided he lacks competence. adjust your style to those of individuals with whom you interact. But any company’s success hinges on its man- agers’ ability to recognize—and implement—good Responding flexibly to various styles of inter- ideas. When we undervalue and reject certain action is especially important in today’s ideas because we misunderstand their presenter’s culturally diverse and global business world. THE IDEA AT WORK This table shows examples of styles of talking (including the assumptions behind each style) and unintended consequences a company may suffer because of misinterpreted stylistic differences. Style of Talking Unintended Consequences of Style Sharing Credit Uses “we” rather than “I” to describe Speaker doesn’t get credit for accomplishments. accomplishments and may hesitate Why? Using “I” seems too self-promoting. to offer good ideas in the future. Acting Modest Downplays their certainty, rather than mini- Speaker appears to lack confidence mizing doubts, about future performance. and, therefore, competence; others Why? Confident behavior seems reject speaker’s good ideas. too boastful. Asking Questions Asks questions freely. Speaker appears ignorant to others; Why? Questions generate needed if organization discourages speaker knowledge. from asking questions, valuable knowl- edge remains buried. Apologizing Apologizes freely. Speaker appears to lack authority. Why? Apologies express concern for others. Giving Feedback Notes weaknesses only after first Person receiving feedback concludes citing strengths. that areas needing improvement aren’t Why? Buffering criticism saves face for important. the individual receiving feedback. Avoiding Verbal Avoids challenging others’ ideas, and Others conclude that speaker has Opposition hedges when stating own ideas. weak ideas. Why? Verbal opposition signals destructive fighting. Managing Up Avoids talking up achievements Managers conclude that speaker hasn’t with higher-ups. achieved much and doesn’t deserve Why? Emphasizing achievements to recognition or promotion. higher-ups constitutes boasting. Being Indirect Speaks indirectly rather than bluntly Subordinates conclude that manager when telling subordinates what to do. lacks assertiveness and clear thinking, Why? Blatantly directing others is too bossy. and judge manager’s directives as unimportant. HBR OnPoint © 2002 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. The Power of Talk: by Deborah Tannen The head of a large division of a multinational reasonable approach. But my field of research, socio- corporation was running a meeting devoted to per- linguistics, suggests otherwise. The CEO obviously formance assessment. Each senior manager stood thinks he knows what a confident person sounds up, reviewed the individuals in his group, and eval- like. But his judgment, which may be dead right for uated them for promotion. Although there were some people, may be dead wrong for others. women in every group, not one of them made the Communication isn’t as simple as saying what cut. One after another, each manager declared, in you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, effect, that every woman in his group didn’t have and differs from one person to the next, because us- the self-confidence needed to be promoted. The di- ing language is learned social behavior: How we vision head began to doubt his ears. How could it be talk and listen are deeply influenced by cultural ex- that all the talented women in the division suffered perience. Although we might think that our ways from a lack of self-confidence? of saying what we mean are natural, we can run In all likelihood, they didn’t. Consider the many into trouble if we interpret and evaluate others as women who have left large corporations to start if they necessarily felt the same way we’d feel if we their own businesses, obviously exhibiting enough spoke the way they did. confidence to succeed on their own. Judgments Since 1974, I have been researching the influence about confidence can be inferred only from the way of linguistic style on conversations and human re- people present themselves, and much of that pre- Deborah Tannen is University Professor and a professor sentation is in the form of talk. of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, The CEO of a major corporation told me that he D.C. She is the author of 15 books, including You Just often has to make decisions in five minutes about Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation matters on which others may have worked five (William Morrow, 1990), which introduced to the gen- months. He said he uses this rule: If the person eral public the idea of female and male styles of com- making the proposal seems confident, the CEO ap- munication. The material in this article is drawn from proves it. If not, he says no. This might seem like a Talking from 9 to 5 (Avon Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER MAKOS We all know what confidence, competence, and authority sound like. Or do we? Who Gets Heard and Why lationships. In the past four years, I have extended view. Linguistic style refers to a person’s character- that research to the workplace, where I have ob- istic speaking pattern. It includes such features as served how ways of speaking learned in childhood directness or indirectness, pacing and pausing, affect judgments of competence and confidence, as word choice, and the use of such elements as jokes, well as who gets heard, who gets credit, and what figures of speech, stories, questions, and apologies. gets done. In other words, linguistic style is a set of culturally The division head who was dumbfounded to hear learned signals by which we not only communicate that all the talented women in his organization what we mean but also interpret others’ meaning lacked confidence was probably right to be skepti- and evaluate one another as people. cal. The senior managers were judging the women Consider turn taking, one element of linguistic in their groups by their own linguistic norms, but style. Conversation is an enterprise in which peo- women – like people who have grown up in a differ- ple take turns: One person speaks, then the other ent culture – have often learned different styles of responds. However, this apparently simple ex- speaking than men, which can make them seem change requires a subtle negotiation of signals so less competent and self-assured than they are. that you know when the other person is finished and it’s your turn to begin. Cultural factors such as What Is Linguistic Style? country or region of origin and ethnic background influence how long a pause seems natural. When Everything that is said must be said in a certain Bob, who is from Detroit, has a conversation with way – in a certain tone of voice, at a certain rate his colleague Joe, from New York City, it’s hard for of speed, and with a certain degree of loudness. him to get a word in edgewise because he expects a Whereas often we consciously consider what to say slightly longer pause between turns than Joe does. before speaking, we rarely think about how to say A pause of that length never comes because, before it, unless the situation is obviously loaded – for ex- it has a chance to, Joe senses an uncomfortable si- ample, a job interview or a tricky performance re- lence, which he fills with more talk of his own. HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1995 139 THE POWER OF TALK Both men fail to realize that differences in conver- They use language to negotiate how close they are; sational style are getting in their way. Bob thinks for example, the girl you tell your secrets to be- that Joe is pushy and uninterested in what he has comes your best friend. Girls learn to downplay to say, and Joe thinks that Bob doesn’t have much to ways in which one is better than the others and to contribute. Similarly, when Sally relocated from emphasize ways in which they are all the same. Texas to Washington, D.C., she kept searching for From childhood, most girls learn that sounding too the right time to break in during staff meetings – sure of themselves will make them unpopular with and never found it.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Machine-Gun Question: an Example of Conv'ersational Style *
    Journal of Pragmatics 5 (1981) 383 ·~-3 97 383 North-Holland Publishing COlnpany THE MACHINE-GUN QUESTION: AN EXAMPLE OF CONV'ERSATIONAL STYLE * DEBORAH TANNEN Scholars in many disciplines have written about style, a tenn Hymes (1974) aptly calls "protean". In a paper originally published in 1927, Sapir includes style as one of five levels of speech contributing "'to judgments of personality, defining it as "an everyday facet of speech that characterizes both the social group and the individual" (1958:542). Robin Lakoff (1979) follows Sapir in identifying speech style with what is popularly perceived as "personality". Ervin-Tripp (1972) places the study of style in the framework of theoretical linguistics. She discusses use of the term by Hymes, Geertz, and Labov, and suggests that linguistic choices are made on two levels. Syntagmatic relations, following rules of co-occurrence, result in idt1ntifiable styles. Paradigmatic relations, following rules of alternation, result in choices among styles and make possible style..switching, on the model of code..switching. Hymes (1974) builds on this work, noting that a speech community is comprised of a set of styles, and asserting that he uses the term in "the root sense of a way or n10de of doing something". Thus speech styles are simply "ways of speaking". He terms styles associated with specific situations registers, thus accounting for what is often thought of as formal vs. informal speech. The sense in which I shall use style is perhaps closest to Hymes' term varieties: "major speech styles associated with social groups". My use of style refers as well to no more nor less than a way of doing something.
    [Show full text]
  • Indirectness in Discourse: What Does It Do in Conversation?
    Intercultural Communication Studies III:1 1993 Sanae Tsuda Indirectness in Discourse: What Does It Do in Conversation? Sanae Tsuda Tokaigakuen Women's College Introduction This paper tries to explore the various aspects of indirectness in conversational discourse. In the beginning, the theoretical frameworks for the analysis of indirectness are explored by examining Grice's theory of conversational implicature and cooperative principles, Ervin Goffman's theory of face, the application of the idea of face to politeness by Brown and Levinson, and Deborah Tannen's theory of conversational style of message and metamessage. Secondly, different functions of indirectness in conversational interaction will be explored in the light of these analyses. In particular, avoidance of confrontation, manipulation of information, joking, and understatement will be examined as manifestations of violations of Grice's cooperative principles. Cultural differences of indirectness will also be explored. I. Theoretical Frameworks for Indirectness in Conversation 1. Conversational Implicature According to Grice (1975), conversational implicature plays an important role in our personal interactions. In conversation, we usually understand what others are saying even when people do not express their intentions straightforwardly. Grice provides a theory which explains how we correctly interpret what others are implying by universal conventions in human interaction which are called cooperative principles. These 63 Intercultural Communication Studies III:1 1993 Sanae
    [Show full text]
  • The Handbook of Discourse Analysis
    The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics This outstanding multi-volume series covers all the major subdisciplines within linguistics today and, when complete, will offer a comprehensive survey of linguistics as a whole. Published Works: The Handbook of Child Language Edited by Paul Fletcher and Brian MacWhinney The Handbook of Phonological Theory Edited by John Goldsmith The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory Edited by Shalom Lappin The Handbook of Sociolinguistics Edited by Florian Coulmas The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences Edited by William Hardcastle and John Laver The Handbook of Morphology Edited by Andrew Spencer and Arnold Zwicky The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics Edited by Natsuko Tsujimura The Handbook of Linguistics Edited by Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory Edited by Mark Baltin and Chris Collins The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton The Handbook of Variation and Change Edited by J. K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes The Handbook of Discourse Analysis Edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001 First published 2001 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Blackwell Publishers Inc. 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148 USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JF UK All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethnicity As Conversational Style* (-
    ,/ Indirectness in Discourse: Ethnicity as Conversational Style* (- ..... ~... "~ tJ _ i S CO u rs..€ i race$<"" t ~ ~'. ~ ~ ~ 9 ~ u _ t'J 1- '? - I." 9 / • f ./ "' <::---"--. ~o /-. f ~ l DEBORAH TANNEN Georg~town University This paper focuses on indirectness in discourse 85 a feature of convcfl\ational style. Reported researcb emphasizes social differences in elpcctations ofindirectness in the contexl ofconver­ Alion between married partners. To discover patterns of interpretation, findings are drawn from (I) interviews with Greeks and Americans about their interactional experience and (2) a pilot study consisting of a ques­ tionnaire based on • conversation reported in (I) and including (a) paraphra~ choices (b) short answers and (c) open-ended interview/discussions with respondenls. Resuhs suggest that Greeks lie more likely 10 expect indirectness in the context pre~cnled, and IhaC Greck­ Americans who may not speak Greek bave retained the innuence of Greek communicalive strategies. Discussion of differences in interpretive strategies focuses on I) the discourse function of questions and 2) the significance of ellipsis, yielding a br~v;ly efftct. associated for Greeks with an ~nlhusUum constraint. 1"heoraical implicationS include an aUernalive 10 Bems(ein~5 hypothc~i5 about restricted and daborated codes, such that restriction and elabor3liun are nOl monolithic. Rather. groups differ with respect to which contexts, channels, and cues require elaboration. I once began a paper on misunderstandings due to differences in conversational style by referring to the following experience. While I was staying with a fa":lily on the island ofCrete, no maUer how early I awoke, nlY hostcs~ nlanagcd (0 have a plate of scrambled eggs waiting on the table for me by the (hnc I was up and dressed; and at dinner every evening, dessert included a pile of purple seeded grapes.
    [Show full text]
  • Conversational Strategy and Metastrategy in a Pragmatic Theory: the Example of Scenes from a Marriage*
    Conversational strategy and metastrategy in a pragmatic theory: The example of Scenes from a Marriage* ROBIN TOLMACH LAKOFF and DEBORAH TANNEN The question of artistic verisimilitude - the relationship between the representation and the reality - is one of the more intriguing issues in a theory of aesthetics. Until now, linguists have largely been isolated from this area of philosophical speculation because it seemed irrelevant to our interests and impervious to our methodology. But as we get more involved in the formal analysis of naturalistic conversations - through tape recordings or transcripts - we are struck, often, in a perverse way by their apparent unnaturalness, their difficulty in being understood. Com­ pared, say, with the dialog in a play or a novel, naturalistic conversation strikes us as not what we expected, not working by preconceived pattern. We would not claim that constructed dialog represents a reality lacking in transcripts, but rather that artificial dialog may represent an internal­ ized model or schema for the production ofconversation - a competence model that speakers have access to. If, then, we are interested in discovering the ideal model ofconversational strategy, there is much to be gained by looking at artificial conversation first, to see what these general, unconsciously-adhered-to assumptions are; and later returning to natural conversation to see how they may actually be exemplified in literal use. Thus, we are not claiming that the artificially-constructed dialog we are going to discuss literally represents natural conversation, but rather that one can inspect a different level of psychological reality and validity through the use of literary data, and in this paper we will illustrate how such work might responsibly be done.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 DEBORAH TANNEN Department of Linguistics Georgetown University
    DEBORAH TANNEN Department of Linguistics Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057 202/687-5910 Education Ph.D. Linguistics. University of California, Berkeley. 1979 M.A. Linguistics. University of California, Berkeley. 1976 M.A. English Literature. Wayne State University. 1970 B.A. English Literature. Harpur College. 1966 Diploma. Hunter College High School. New York, NY. 1962 Honorary Doctorates University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2002 St. Mary's College, St. Mary's City, MD, 1998 Weber State University, Ogden, UT, 1997 St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT, 1996 Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 1993 Professional Positions University Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 1991-present 1989-1991: Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University 1985-1989: Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University 1979-1985: Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University Visiting 2012-2013 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA June 1997 Faculty, 1997 Linguistic Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 1992-1993 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA Spring 1992 Visiting Scholar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ Fall 1991 McGraw Distinguished Lecturer, Council for the Humanities and Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1986-1987 Research Associate, Joint Program in Applied Anthropology, Teachers College, Columbia University,
    [Show full text]
  • Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse
    Pittsburgh University School of Law Scholarship@PITT LAW Articles Faculty Publications 1994 Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse Bernard J. Hibbitts University of Pittsburgh School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles Recommended Citation Bernard J. Hibbitts, Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse, 16 Cardozo Law Review 229 (1994). Available at: https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/122 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship@PITT LAW. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@PITT LAW. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. ARTICLES MAKING SENSE OF METAPHORS: VISUALITY, AURALITY, AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF AMERICAN LEGAL DISCOURSE Bernard J.Hibbitts* TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: "AN EAR FOR AN EYE" .................... 229 I. METAPHORS IN LIFE AND LAW ........................ 233 II. "MIRRORS OF JUSTICE": VISUALITY AND LEGAL D ISCOURSE ............................................. 238 A . Seeing Culture ..................................... 238 B. Visuality and Power ................................ 264 C. Law and the Phenomenology of Sight ............. 291 III. "FAIR HEARINGS": AURALITY AND THE NEW LEGAL LANGUAGE ............................................ 300 A. Hearing Culture ...................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication1
    The Pragmatics of Cross-Cultural Communication1 DEBORAH TANNEN Georgetown University, Washington 1. INTRODUCTION The study of cross-cultural communication is a paradigm example of the insepar- Downloaded from ability of linguistic theory and application. Linguists study cross-cultural com- munication for its applied significance, which is enormous, given the heterogeneity of societies affected by global migrations and the increasingly cross-cultural nature of commerce, diplomacy, and personal relationships throughout the world. And we also study cross-cultural communication because it provides a discourse analog to the starred sentence in linguistic argumentation. By examining interactions in which http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/ habits and expectations about how to show what is meant by what is said are not shared, we can see semantic processes—how language means—which are harder to observe in the seamless surface of successful communication. I will illustrate the range of aspects of communication that can vary from culture to culture by discussing and exemplifying eight levels of differences in sig- nalling how speakers mean what they say. These aspects of ways of speaking are not extra-linguistic nor even paralinguistic but are the essence of language. Just as physicists understand the nature of physical elements by observing their behavior in various environments and in interaction with other elements, so we at University of South Carolina - Columbia on September 4, 2012 come to understand the nature of language by observing it in communication and in contact with other systems of communication. In analysing the pragmatics of cross-cultural communication, we are analysing language itself. 2. LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION DIFFERENCES What is it that can be culturally relative in communication? The answer is, just about everything—all the aspects of what to say and how to say it.
    [Show full text]
  • Outline of Communication
    Outline of communication The following outline is provided as an overview of and 2.1.2 Types of communication by mode topical guide to communication: • Conversation Communication – purposeful activity of exchanging in- formation and meaning across space and time using vari- • Mail ous technical or natural means, whichever is available or preferred. Communication requires a sender, a message, • Mass media a medium and a recipient, although the receiver does not • Book have to be present or aware of the sender’s intent to com- municate at the time of communication; thus communi- • Film cation can occur across vast distances in time and space. • Journalism • News media • Newspaper 1 Essence of communication • Technical writing • Video • Communication theory • Telecommunication (outline) • Development communication • Morse Code • Information • Radio • Telephone • Information theory • Television • Semiotics • Internet • Verbal communication 2 Branches of communication • Writing 2.1 Types of communication 2.2 Fields of communication 2.1.1 Types of communication by scope • Communication studies • Cognitive linguistics • Computer-mediated communication • Conversation analysis • Health communication • Crisis communication • Intercultural communication • Discourse analysis • International communication • Environmental communication • • Interpersonal communication Interpersonal communication • Linguistics • Intrapersonal communication • Mass communication • Mass communication • Mediated cross-border communication • Nonverbal communication • Organizational
    [Show full text]
  • You Just Don't Understand
    You Just Don't Understand 1 You Jus Don't UNDERSTAND By: Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. Synopsis: Deborah Tannen uses telling examples to stunningly demonstrate how even in the closest of relationships women and men live in different worlds made of different words. The deft way she elucidates how our complex verbal give and take works or does not work and shows how the sexes can unravel their tangled language has made You Just Don't Understand a cultural phenomenon and has kept it on the New York Times best seller list for over 4 years. Also by Deborah Tannen: That's Not what I Meant Scholarly Books: Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends Lilika Nakos Linguistics in Context: Connecting Observation and Understanding (Editor) Languages and Linguistics: The Interdependence of Theory, Data, and Application (Co-Editor with James E. Alatis) Perspectives on Silence (Co-Editor with Muriel Saville-Troike) Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse (Editor) Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy (Editor) Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk (Editor) 2 You Jus Don't UNDERSTAND Women and Men in Conversation Deborah Tannen, .). Ballantine Books New York Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. if this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it. Copyright 1990 by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
    [Show full text]
  • Silence and the Construction of Reality
    Ethics and Information Technology (2007) 9:281–295 Ó Springer 2008 DOI 10.1007/s10676-007-9148-0 When Nightingales Break the Law: Silence and the Construction of Reality Sandra Braman Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 210 Johnston Hall, 2522 E. Hartford Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Strikingly, theorizing about digital technologies has led us to recognize many habitual subjects of research as figures against fields that are also worthy of study. Communication, for example, becomes visible only against the field of silence. Silence is critically important for the construction of reality – and the social construction of reality has a complement, the also necessary contemplative construction of reality. Silence is so sensitive and fragile that an inability to achieve it, or to get rid of it, or to correct the wrong kind of silence often provides early indicators of individual, group, communal, and society-wide stresses from information tech- nologies. Indeed, we might treat difficulties with silence as miners treated canaries in coal mines, as early warning signals. The story has already been told that nightingales in London now have to sing so loudly in order to be heard above the ambient noise that the birds are in danger of breaking the noise ordinance law. Surely something has gone awry if nightingales break the law when they sing. Finding ways to protect silence as an arena of personal and social choice is a particularly poignant, evocative, and instructive ethical and policy horizon at this frontier moment for the human species. This article introduces the theory of the contemplative construction of reality, explores what the study of silence tells us about reality construction processes, and outlines a research agenda.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral and Literate Strategies in Spoken and Written Narratives." Language 58(1982):1.1-21
    ORAL AND LITERATE STRATEGIES IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN NARRATIVES DEBORAH TANNEN George/ou'" University Comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative demonstrates (I) that features which have been identified as characterizing oral discourse are also found in written discourse. and (2) that the written short story combines syntactic complexity expected in writing with features which create involvement expected in speaking. Quint- essentially literary devices (repetition of sounds and words, syntactic structures, and rhythm) are shared by written literary language and ordinary spontaneous conversation because both are typified by subjective knowing and by focus on interpersonal involve- ment. In contrast, expository prose and content-focused oral genres, such as lectures and instructions, may be typified by objective knowing and by focus on content.* Linguistic research too often focuses on one or another kind ofdata, without __ its. relationship to other kinds. In order to determine which texts are past and projected research, a perspective is needed on the kinds of language studied and their interrelationships. Moreover, as Lakoff 1981 observes, dis- course analysis needs a taxonomy of discourse types, and ways·of distinguish- ing among them. Through close comparative analysis of spoken and written versions of a narrative produced by the same person, two dimensions crucial to discourse types will be addressed here: (I) spoken vs. written modes, and (2) the rela- tionship between literary language. and the language of ordinary conversation. Following background discussion of related research, recent studies by Ochs 1979 and Chafe 1979a provide initial inventories of features associated with informal spoken and formal written discourse.
    [Show full text]